Saturday, 18 May 2013

The Mansions of ‘The Great Gatsby’

The Gatsby Mansion as it appears in the 2013 film

This week seen the release of Baz Luhrmann’s new and reimagined version of the ‘The Great Gatsby’.Well, Mr Luhrmann is certainly a great artist but possibly not a great director. His wife, Catherine Martin who was the Production Designer has done another wonderful job but I have to admit I felt the whole affair felt a bit flat. The reliance on special effects and the use of the green screen made their interpretation of the world of Gatsby feel highly artificial. In the novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the mansions of Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are located in the privileged fictional hamlets of “East Egg” and “West Egg”. These sprawling mansions are located directly across the bay from each other on Long Island, New York. However the bay separated two similar but completely different worlds. East Egg is considered “old money” territory for the likes of Daisy Buchanan and her continuously unfaithful husband Tom, whilst newly rich Jay Gatsby’s home is in West Egg which is considered the land of the nouveau riche.

The Gatsby mansion depicted in this new film is an awesome creation however one can tell from the start that it isn’t a real house. Despite the best efforts of the graphics department you are never truly convinced that this building could have existed. The exterior of the Gatsby mansion in reality was a section of a disused seminary near Sydney, where as you can see from the photos, this building took a lot of computer trickery to transform it in to what we see on screen. One wonders what was the thinking behind the selection of this location? it looks nothing like the final building that we see on screen.

The building in Sydney that used as the setting for the Gatsby mansion

The disused Seminary was dressed with Ivy to help transform it into a mansion from the 1920's

For the exterior shots of Gatsby’s estate, the Gothic Revival building of the former St. Patrick’s Seminary in Sydney had faux ivy applied to the first two floors and a temporary fountain constructed in the courtyard; plus, in postproduction, soaring turrets were added digitally. This technique was used as the production was filmed in Australia which would not have the same ostentatious 1920’s architectural heritage which would survive in the United States. It is sad that they didn’t use Oheka Castle in the US which appears to have been purpose built as the film set for this film.

The wondeful Oheka Castle in the United States which would have made a wonderful setting for the Gatsby mansion

A financier and philanthropist Otto Hermann Kahn built Oheka Castle in the middle of a 443 acre plot on the highest point on Long Island in Cold Spring Harbour, for an estimated cost of $11 million dollars ($110 million dollars in today’s currency). At the time of its construction, the French-style chateau was, and still is today, the second-largest private residence ever built in America. During the Gilded Age of the 1920’s, Kahn used the 109,000 square foot, 127 room estate as a summer home where he hosted lavish parties and regularly entertained royalty, heads of state, and Hollywood stars. This mansion which still survives today is now a popular wedding venue and hotel would have been the perfect setting for the film and would have lent the production the touch of authenticity it lacks.

This mansion and its wonderful gardens would have needed little computer manipulation

All the sets seems overblown and lacking credibility, for all the talk about the size and grandeur of the Gatsby mansion we actually see very little of its interior. Catherine Martin, the Production Designer, oversaw the 42 individual sets which were created in and around Sydney, both on location and on soundstages. It took her team 14 weeks just to build, paint, and decorate Gatsby’s mansion, which called for a grand ballroom, library, master bedroom, entrance hall, and terrace, as well as a garden.

Beacon Towers which was the inspiration for the mansion in the book and the current film

The inspiration for the house in the novel and this year’s film was Beacon Towers, a fantastical house which was demolished in the 1940s. One of the most amazing mansions ever built on Long Island was the residence of William K. Vanderbilt, Jr's mother, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. One can see the influence of this building on the mansion that we see on the screen however it appears the terrace and gardens came from Oheka.

The Buchanan Mansion as it appears in the film

Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby’s love interest lives across the bay in another architectural monstrosity, which despite being described as ‘old money’ the mansion looks in the 2013 movie that most of the furnishing and props, were purchased yesterday. Yet another opportunity was lost as surely there must be an elaborate mansion somewhere that could have stood in for the Buchanan homestead. Again the architecture of this house is so exaggerated and smacks of a computer generated model that its tests the gullibility of the viewer. The house is depicted as Georgian redbrick manor with a monstrous portico and curved side wings. Again the Production Design department’s inspiration was a house called Westbury Gardens in New York which obviously wasn’t grandiose enough to be used in the film.

Westbury Gardens in the US which have provided a more suitable and realistic backdrop

The real house that inspired the Buchanan home was demolished in 2011 and as you can see from the pictures the real house was a simpler affair. ‘Land’s End’, the grand colonial mansion was torn down as it cost $4,500 each day to maintain the estate built in 1902. Ironically it was demolished as a former millionaire, made poor by Bernie Madoff, who could no longer afford to pay the taxes on the property.

Lands End which was the real inspiration for Daisy's home

The fate of the mansion and the wealth of its owners bears a resemblance to the Wall Street crash that would bring the curtain down on the extravagance of the 1920’s. With a reported budget of over $100 million it is a shame that some of this money wasn’t used on plane tickets to shoot the film on location in the United States.

However Lands End is no more as it was demolished in 2011

Sunday, 12 May 2013

A LONG LOST PAINTING IS FOUND IN A PARIS APARTMENT WHICH WAS UNTOUCHED FOR 70 YEARS

Firstly
let me say there is a wonderful book in this story and I’d love to be the
person to work on it, if not write it. This may be the account of a locked
apartment full of dusty possessions but when the story behind them is told that
is where their true value lies. There is definitely a film script in the bones
of this story of a long lost masterpiece and a love story. Many
of us dream of finding a long lost masterpiece but imagine opening the door of
an apartment that nobody else had stepped in to in over seventy years. Here
stacked and covered in dust were personal items, furniture and works of art,
left as their owner fled Paris in fear of the approaching Nazi's. Among the
dust covered belongings was a long lost work by the 19th century Italian artist
Giovanni Boldini. The lady in the painting was a muse of the artist and the
grandmother of the lady who left the apartment as a time capsule in 1941. For
whatever reason she kept the apartment locked despite living in the South of
France until her death in 2010 at 91.

The work of art that sold for £1.78million

The
apartment was the home of Marthe de Florian who was the lady in the painting,
at the time of the Second World War it was locked by her granddaughter and left
untouched. It passed through various generations of the family who were aware
of its existence and kept up the payments of taxes on the property but decided
to leave it as it was. Items such as a dusty stuffed
ostrich and a Mickey use toy dating from before the war, all add to this remarkable
story. Eventually when the lady who had locked the apartment in 1941 died in
2010 her heirs decided the time had come to break the spell and disturb the
slumber of the Paris home.

Boldini who created the masterpiece

There was no initial record of
the painting of Marthe
de Florianbut a calling card
was found with a scribbled love note from Boldini. This led to a reference to
the work in a book by the artist's widow, which said it, was painted in 1898
when Miss de Florian was 24. The starting
price for the painting when it was placed in an auction seeking offers for
around £253,000. However the historic work with the interesting provenance finally
sold for £1.78million, a world record for the artist.

The dining room of the apartment which was left untouched in the 1940's

I feel
when you see the pictures of the apartment in its original state that it was a
shame that it was disturbed, broken up and items sold. I would prefer that it
was cataloged and displayed in a museum something similar to the Francis Bacon
exhibit in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. At least in that guise every one
could experience a little of the magic of finding this sleeping beauty.

The Irish Country House Blog - The Houses Known by the Trees

My name is David Hicks and I am the author of 'Irish Country Houses - A Chronicle of Change' published in October 2012 and 'Irish Country Houses - Portraits & Painters' published in October 2014 , both published by Collins Press, Cork. This blog features unpublished articles and photographs assembled from my archive gathered over years of research. I am currently compiling my third book 'Irish Country Houses - Restoration & Redemption'.
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